Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

For those who don't know, this tourney is pretty much the premier tournament event in the upper Midwest, barring Chicago. First prize is a white wolf cavalry hammer. Prizes are given for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place in each category: Generalship, Painting, Sportsmanship, and Overall (combines the first three). Also, new this year, if at least two players are playing a particular army, you could win "best Empire general" or similar for each one. My paint job is frankly awful at this point, so I was just looking to play some good games, meet some folks, and say I'd been there.

Scoring was something like Loss- 4, draw 11, win 20 (there were no massacres available) and then you got a couple extra points per round for doing things like kill the BSB, kill the cheapest unit, kill all the opponent's non-core, etc.

My list:

Arch Lector, War Altar, Speculum, Dawn Armor, Great Weapon

Walking priest, 1+ rerollable save (re-rolls first fail), great weapon.

Riding Priest, dragonhelm (1+ save)

BSB captain on a horse, charmed shield (1+ save and ignores the first hit of the game on a 2+)

Master Engineer with attractive shirt ruffles and a molestache.

2 Helblasters
2 cannons
2 mortars
2 units of 30 swordsmen with command
23 greatswords with command
9 Great Weapon knights with command and the banner of re-roll your first leadership fail.

This list has since been updated, but I'll reserve comment until the end. I did take some pictures during some games, but there was some time pressure and I wasn't very consistent. Also, all I've got is a phone, so I'm sorry they're terrible. It's just to give you an idea. I asked for a camera for Christmas.

Game 1 Vs Daemons.



Deployment looked like this. on the left, 5 flesh doggies. Hidden by the house is a 3-pack of flamers with a pyrocaster. Then some plaguebearers with a walking herald, a beast of nurgle (!), a bunch of bloodletters with a herald BSB on a juggernaut, an additional beast of nurgle (!!) and another 3-pack of mutated fiery death.

I respond with cannons on the flank, knights, swordsmen, mortars in a walled enclosure of some sort, helblasters with engineer babysitting, swordsmen, greatswords.

It's been a while, and I won't attempt a turn-by-turn breakdown, but rather just give you the salient points. The cannons got one turn of shooting, which they used to snipe the juggernaut BSB right out of his bunker. They couldn't see the thirster. I also wiggled the knights around to look at the cannons, assuming I'd be able to charge the dogs when they charged the guns.

This is exactly what happened. The doggies, coming in from a particular angle, charged one cannon and munched it and overran into the other one to wait politely for my turn. My priest and his entourage charged in on my turn, and also the helblasters rolled hot and thinned out the bloodletters quite a bit. Mortars tried for a couple plaguebearers (I couldn't fire the helblaster at the plaguebearers due to range problems, if you're correctly thinking this targeting should have been reversed) and got maybe one or two.

In the combat phase, my knights set a new standard for epic fail, which more or less decided the game. First, the dogs obliterated the cannon crew (+3 combat res) and then the dog on the side did two wounds to the knights (yes, I failed 2 4+ armor saves). The remaining 7 knights and priest rolled 4 hits out of their collective 10 attacks, and then rolled only one 3+ to wound, which dog boy then saved on his ward. Both sides had charged, so all I had was my flank and my banner, meaning I lost the combat by 3 and double-failed my 5 test. The dogs, delighted, ran down all 400 points of them on a very long pursuit that put him in easy charge range of the mortars. The bloodthirster got in combat with the greatswords, and shortly pieces of greatsword champion began flying in all directions, but the unit stubbornly held.



Meanwhile, back in the rest of the game, I combo-charged a beast with my popemobile and one swordsman troop and smashed it (see photo). This was my last-ditch effort to save the game. My plan was to overrun with the swords, which would put them in the way of the plaguebearers and keep them away from the popemobile for long enough for me to get the popemobile into combat with the bloodthirster and, presumably, win the game. The first part of this plan went great, and the beast was duly smashed, not even surviving to roll an instability test. The overrun from the swords was plenty to get them into those last two bloodletters you can see under the thirster's wing, positioning them perfectly for a flank charge, but completely blocking the pudgy green threat from getting into my general. There were a couple missing plaguebearers, and I assumed I could hang onto steadfast for long enough to complete my strategy.

I'm sure my alert readers will be able to predict the end of this story. The swordsmen were, in fact, steadfast when they failed their break test. I had tried to get the BSB in range but hadn't quite managed it due to the complex maneuvers that were necessary, so when I rolled an 11 on my steadfast 9, the swordsmen broke and ran, and the plaguebearers chased them right into the side of the war altar. Caught them, too.

My general killed the hell out of the herald of nurgle, and then gradually succumbed to the huge swarm of poisoned attacks while the bloodthirster chewed up greatswords bit by bit. The other swordsman troop rushed to support their commander, but didn't have much room to do any fighting and duly lost combat and were run down. Thus at the end of the game, i found myself tabled, having killed both beasts and a BSB but that was it (oh yeah, also got the last 2 bloodletters). The BSB got me an extra scenario point, so I finished with a 5.

4 more games to report. To be continued...

Nice! Thanks for the report. The pictures are just fine. Even a deployment picture goes a long way towards helping out, and the second one was great for highlighting the pivotal combat in the center.

Your leadership checks are a good example of why Daemons are still plenty nasty. If you fail a critical break check, you're looking at the probable loss of the entire unit. Daemons? Just lose a handful more.

Looking forward to the next 4 games.

Agreed about the pics, they help a lot! I'm not a huge fan of people using the balrog as a bloodthirster... I think LOTR models are non-heroic (?) scale, and their weapons / etc. just seem too puny in warhammer.

I'm still scared of daemons, although it looks like you caught some bad breaks in this one! Hopefully the next few went a little better for you

Malleus wrote:
Master Engineer with attractive shirt ruffles and a molestache.

I laughed way harder at this whole line than I probably should have, but especially the bolded part got me.

Round 2 Vs WoC



The scenario was Battle for the Pass. This is a highly suboptimal chaos list, and I've got a speculum, and he has to walk a considerable distance to get into my guns... yeah, we can all see where this is going.

Left to right, he's got a 10 pack of dogs, 18 nurgle-marked halberd warriors with the banner of rage, 14 tzeentch sword and board warriors with a level 4 caster and his BSB, 30 tzeentch-marked sword and board marauders (!), another 10 pack of dogs hidden by trees, a spawn, and a very choppy combat hero of some sort with 8 knights. I answer with two cannons, greatswords, swordsmen, more swordsmen with BSB, mortars, one helblaster in the building and one next to it, and knights with priest.

I won't break this one down turn-by-turn, but I did end up going first. Artillery shooting of various types thinned out a couple of warrior blocks and the marauders, and there was a complicated little dance on the left flank to determine who was going to charge whom. My turn 2, I charge the dogs, he flees and I opt not to redirect. On his turn, he charges my knights and I flee to give me more time to helblast him, noting that although my BSB is out of range, I've still got the gleaming pennant. Somewhere in here I've also gotten the pope wagon into the front of his tizz warriors, where challenges are duly issued and accepted and a great deal of nothing proceeds to happen for a while. Also, the greatswords swallow hard and charge the nurgleberds in the face.

After a couple of turns, we arrive at the following position:


This turned out to be a seriously epic 11-dice magic phase, during which both Birona's Timewarp and Soulfire got through on the greatswords and their priest, and the soulfire netted four wounds (if you're keeping track, a mortar had previously picked off two more). With no character support at all, the nurglites weren't up to the challenge (greatswords with that much magic support and hatred are no joke) and, though a few greatswords died, I won the combat by an awful lot and ran the bad guys down. The remaining two knights also got helblasted, leaving a very nervous-looking exalted hero hanging around by himself. As you can also see, my swordsmen with BSB are in position to countercharge the marauders if they decide to go after the building.

Precisely that ended up happening, the swordsmen's flank bonuses and high SCR making the surviving marauders quit surviving. The greatswords turned around and attacked the tizz warriors, not rolling so great but still breaking then in combat in the same turn the warriors finally chopped the wagon out from under the arch lector (both characters had previously discovered a virulent speculum allergy and retired from the field).

On the left, the exalted hero ultimately charged the knights, who decided to hold. The priest, a cowardly soul more suited to theology textbooks than to the hack and slash of battle, hid in the back of the unit, but it turned out the gallant knights didn't need him, doing enough wounds to finish what the helblasters had started. Ultimately the helblasters finished off the warriors and the greatswords fought off that spawn (did I forget to mention that spawn? There were two), meaning that my opponent's two surviving units were warhounds.

Near the end of the game.

So, now I'm 1-1.

Round 3 vs high elves (sorry, no pics)

This was the only game of the tourney where I ran into serious time pressure, hence the lack of photos. The high elf list included a level 4 fire mage (no book), a BSB, two 16-packs of swordmasters, a big seaguardstar, two 10-packs of archers, and some bolt throwers. the Scenario was meeting engagement.

The less said here, the better. This game turned on two bits of really shocking luck. First, in an early magic phase, he cast flame cage on the greatswords. Very well, I decided to let that go as I didn't particularly need to move them. I shut down the rest of his magic, and then he shot enough greatswords (containing BSB, mind you) to make them take a panic test. Sure enough, they DOUBLE FAILED their 9 check and ran right out of the flame cage, meaning that all but 4 of them died from s4 hits (my armor saving really sucked). Note that this was initially a 25 model unit, and now there are 4 greatswords, priest, and BSB in it... 6/25, can't rally. They fled off the board and my hopes for the game fled with them.

In a desperate attempt to save the game, I made a very long charge (needed 10, rolled 11) into his seaguardstar and also charged a swordmaster unit with my knights and a unit of swordsmen. The swordmasters put 5 wounds on the knights (and a few more on swordsmen) and I had to take 5 armor saves at 4+. Would anyone care to guess how many of them I failed?

That's correct. Every single one.

Deciding to turn their armor in for the warranty, the remaining knights did manage to roll perfect; 5 hits, 5 wounds, no armor, and even the priest and the swordsmen chipped in a kill or two. However, I lost the combat by one lousy point. Predictably, both units broke and fled, and the swordmasters caught the knights.

He mopped up, and the game ended with my pope wagon still tanking a ridiculous number of hits from sea guard in front and archers in both flanks. I didn't count at the time, but the math suggests it was about 120 hits that my doughty little wagon managed to take. However, his 296 points weren't nearly enough to stave off the massacre.

My opponent was very gracious and polite, and as a far superior tactician deserves more credit than this report is giving him. I don't intend to suggest that I lost solely because of luck. I do think, though, that I might have killed one or two units, at least, if the dice had been something resembling average.

Round 4 vs more Warriors of Chaos and Round 5 Vs ogres, including pictures, to be posted later today.

Double-post due to extreme length.

Round 4 vs WoC Again

No surprise here, because WoC were massively overrepresented at this tourney. I think about 11 of the 70 armies present were warriors. Works great for me, you'd think, what with you-must-always-challenge and so on. We'll see.


This picture is actually at his Top of 2, I think. As you can tell, it's meeting engagement again. I've opted to leave my knights in reserve with their priest (this version of the scenario allows that) and everything else should be fairly obvious from the picture. He's got a puppet sorc on a disc, 2 big warrior blocks (a tz hw/s with his BSB and a khorne halberd ripsaw), one nurgle knight unit with an exalted on a daemonic mount and one khorne 5-pack (in the forest). There's some forests which make it hard to shoot things.

Just some highlights. The greatswords charged the chaos knights in the forest and took gruesome casualties, but managed to kill all of them in return. Then they got flickering fired for 6 s7 hits and were down to about 6 or 7 guys and their priest, who form into a conga line facing the totally untouched tz warriors. I fired all available cannon shots at the hellcannon. I hit it 4 times, and the first 3 times I rolled a 1 to wound. The fourth time I rolled a 3 to wound and a 1 to multi-wound. Hellcannon survives. The khorne halberds get into the front of my right-hand swordsmen, the BSB swordsmen manage a very long charge into his knights with exalted, and the knights show up and look around for something useful to do. At some point, a helblaster explodes. That gets us here:


What you can't see in this photo is the still-barely-touched hellcannon firing a big rock, which lands on the pope wagon and smashes the hell out of it, rolling 6 wounds. The arch lector takes a wound but lives. My plan had been to pope-block the tz warriors and use the greatswords and knights to tip the other combats in my favor, but in the same magic phase, infernal gateway lays an 9-wound (s8) smackdown on the knights, and their cowardly priest decides to take the rest of the battle off and runs off the board.

So, the battle winds down to its predictable end with knights and halberds slowly chewing their way through the rest of my swordsmen. I moved the now-walking arch lector with his speculum to the front of the greatsword conga line (apparently this was actually illegal... oops) for the tz warriors to charge. he also managed to cast a 4+ ward save on himself to replace his shiny wagon. The tz warriors charge, and the BSB gets speculumed. I start to feel ok, until with his 2 attacks the chaos filth rolls a killing blow. Ward save failed, general dead, game over. The greatswords ran and got away, managing to survive the game, but they were the only thing that did, while all I got points for were the vanilla unit of khorne knights.

Round 5 Vs Ogres.

I once again forgot to take a picture of deployment. The table contained a tower of blood, so when I won the roll-off for table sides, I took the other side. Ogres are bad. Frenzied hatred ogres are worse.

He had 9 bulls, 9 more bulls, 6 ironguts with a tyrant and a bruiser BSB, a slaughtermaster, a butcher, and 2 very large units of gnoblars. I should add that this was by far the most gorgeous army I played during the weekend, and its owner (though obviously 1-3 by this point, just like me) ended up winning second place in the painting division.

His deployment was something like:

Gnoblars-Bulls-More Bulls (slaughtermaster) here- Ironguts (BSB, Tyrant, AND slaughtermaster here), more gnoblars anchored against the tower of blood in the corner.

I answered with Cannons- swordsmen- swordsmen (BSB)- knights- Mortars and blasters and engy- pope- greatswords.

Things started out ok for me. As he trucked forward, I charged the knights into his leftmost unit of bulls, and positioned my greatswords to block his ironguts' charge. Mortars panicked the left-hand unit of gnoblars (who never rallied). I forgot to dispel his various RIP spells (this would become a theme), but I did manage to get timewarp off on the knights in their combat and also soulfire an ogre to death through regen.

The combat phase saw a few knights die, but their very large number of hatred attacks was too much for the bulls, who broke and couldn't escape.

I had carefully positioned my swordsmen to flank charge the remaining bulls when they overran into the second layer of war machines, and the BSB left the unit to walk by himself into range of the greatswords so they'd be sure to stick.

... be sure to stick.

In his turn, his unengaged bulls, somewhat the worse for wear from helblaster shooting, charged my guns, and his tyrant solo-charged out of the guts into my BSB, demonstrating that I'm dumber than sand. The bulls devoured a helblaster and overran into a mortar, but stayed in the swordsman charge arc.

The tyrant rolled poorly to hit, didn't have an impressive magic weapon, and had one of his hits ignored on a charmed shield, so the BSB actually survived this round with one wound.

On my turn, I charged my greatswords into the now tyrant-free guts, flank charged the artillery-munching bulls, and turned the knights around to come and rear charge somebody.I was feeling pretty confident at this point. In the magic phase, I rolled a disgusting number of dice and put a ward save on the BSB and healed him. I saved up a bunch of dice to put pha's protection on the greatswords, but he used all six dice and boxcarred the dispel. So, greatswords vs guts straight up.

The BSB took another wound (or maybe it was the same wound from before?) but hung on with his ward save. The greatswords, though, lost combat by a couple of points and decided the time was right to double-fail their second stubborn 9 check of the tourney, getting run down by the angry ironguts, who also pursued into the war altar. The swordsmen broke and ran down the bulls for some cold comfort.

This picture comes from the middle of that combat phase.


no more turn-by-turn breakdowns; it's too painful. The ironguts characters knew enough to refuse challenges and slowly pounded the pope wagon into scrap. The Tyrant finally squished the plucky BSB after dispelling his ward save and turned to face a charge from the nearly-untouched swordsmen.

They charged, and so did the knights, which was when I found out about the tyrant's crown of command.



The stubborn tyrant challenged and devoured, in order, the swordsmen champ, the knight champ, and the priest, and finally also slapped the knights to death, aided by the ironguts with bsb who ultimately flank charged them, their SCR causing the swordsmen to break and run. I ended the game with one unit of ninja swordsmen and a cannon or two surviving. It was closer than you'd think, but still a clear loss.

Post-tourney breakdown:

Hero of the Tourney: The obvious choice is the speculum walter pope. His spells were critical in basically every combat that went well for me, and he also fulfilled his primary function of neutralizing a powerful enemy combat block whenever given half a chance. He can't catch a bloodthirster, but this we already knew. It's not his fault he was let down by ...

Goat of the tourney: the knights. A fast, maneuverable, very very choppy combat unit for flanking and general mayhem, right? Wrong! These douches consistently failed every task they were asked to do. They simply don't have enough wounds to survive in a metagame with this many attacks, no matter how good their armor save is. Their few successes (mainly vs the ogre bulls and the lone chaos hero in round 2) were stacked in their favor in nearly every possible way. Their damage output proved to be good, but they never seemed to survive to deliver it.

Goat of the tourney II: The cannons. I needed them exactly once, and they failed epically to take down that thrice-damned hellcannon. Something has got to be done.

Semi-successful gimmick of the tourney: 2 helblasters with a master engineer supporting them dish out a large helping of pain and misery to anybody who gets near them.

Failed gimmick of the tourney: My wizard-free list with +4 DD was supposed to provide ample magic defense. However, I am beginning to realize that no number of DD is really too much help in the absence of dispelling bonuses. Will be finding room for a wizard in the list, probably also with a scroll.

I'm glad I participated, more or less. I learned a lot, and I won 2 boxes of dwarf slayers in the raffle, so it wasn't a total loss.

Comment away!

Hey Malleus, very nice BatReps and don't worry about the pictures. I admit I was shocked to see that you didn't take any wizard. While the Altar helps out some in this area, and L4 (preferrably with something else than Light) is a must.

I have had some moderate success with knight units of around 10 but they usually all die. These guys need better initiative or they will as you found out die without doing much.

If it is any consolation, your bad luck in some of those games rivals mine. I put 5 flaming wounds on a HPA, it goes and drinks from a fountain and restores them all. I charge + flank 100 Slaves with 70 Halberds and WP and STank and lose them all. I need a 5 to charge and kill some Crossbow Elves and roll snake eyes....gotta take it on the chin I guess!

Begone back to the unliving pits from which you spawned, you unliving abomination!!!

I'm shocked I missed reading this report Mall, though I remember seeing it go up. Perhaps the walter + 6 war machines was such a big turn off or something?

Anyway, thanks for the read. Bummer about going 1-4, but sad dice times and going up against DoC and WoC (x2) with a not-also-fantastic-at-combat will do that some times ...

Do you have pics of your army somewhere? The theme, from the title and blurry shots, looks pretty cool (lizards and/or conquistadors??) and your walter looks way neat from the last couple shots!

- Salvage

Thanks for the very late feedback, gentlemen. At the risk of condoning threadromancy, I'll say that the army has undergone an awful lot of changes since this list. I normally run no more than 3 mortars as shooting, with the occasional squad of pistoliers at >2400 points.

Boss, I have some camera pics of the army, but none particularly close. I'll get around to posting them sooner or later.

I know I replied to an old thread, the site even provides a warning. I thought the BatReps were worth it though and was saddened to see so few replies.

Well i for one read them when they came up but i rarely comment on batreps.